Hon Chairperson; my colleague, the Minister of Arts and Culture, Paul Mashatile; other Ministers present; Deputy Ministers present; our committee chairperson, the hon Babalwa Sunduza; members of the portfolio committee; members of the House; management present here; guests in the gallery; leaders of our entities; chairpersons; chief executive officers in the gallery; and all our stakeholders, six days ago, on 10 May this year, we celebrated 19 years since President Mandela took the oath of office as our first President of a democratic South Africa. This was the beginning of the reconstructive leg of our long walk to freedom after many centuries and decades of struggle against colonialism and apartheid. That journey took us to the adoption of our Constitution in March 1996, which has been hailed as one of the most progressive in the world. In the Preamble to our Constitution, we declared:
We, the people of South Africa, Recognise the injustices of our past; Honour those who suffered for justice and freedom in our land; Respect those who have worked to build and develop our country; and Believe that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, united in our diversity.
This was indeed a profound statement of the aspirations of our new nation.
Over the past 19 years, the ANC, which is the elected government of the people and the leader of society, has worked with all our people to actualise the aspirations expressed in this Preamble.
We have systematically removed from the Statute Book all the laws that sought to undermine the values, cultures and dignity of our people and replaced them with progressive policies and laws. Our Fourth Parliament since 2009 has been laying more bricks on the foundation laid by then President Mandela. In order to take our reconstruction and transformation process forward to a higher level, we adopted the National Development Plan in 2012.
From our appointment as leaders of this Ministry and department, we understood that this sector had three major roles to play in the reconstruction of our nation. Firstly, we needed to lead the work of building a new South African nation on the ruins of colonialism, racism and apartheid. We needed to be drivers in what President Mandela called "the reconstruction and development programme of the soul". Nation-building and social cohesion are therefore our core business and we welcome the realisation of that by the hon Van der Berg of the opposition. We hope that the opposition will also translate this into real action.
Secondly, arts and culture and the creative industry needed to be a major contributor to economic growth and job creation. Lastly, arts and culture needed to be a potent instrument of creating relations with other nations of the world, enhancing both political and economic diplomacy. This last point - our international relations - is very relevant this year and this month as we celebrate 50 years since the formation of the Organisation of African Unity, which is now called the African Union.
We are grateful to the sister people of our continent, who, through the work of the Organisation of African Unity, the subregional bodies such as the Southern African Development Community, the frontline states and other multilateral organisations, such as the Nonaligned Movement, the Commonwealth and the United Nations, always placed high on their agenda the support for the liberation struggle of our people.
Today we pay homage to the founders of the OAU; those pioneering and visionary leaders such as Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere, Sekou Toure, Kenneth Kaunda, Abdel Nasser, to mention just a few. In honour of their pioneering work, we will be hosting a month-long exhibition of contemporary visual art by different artists from the SADC region from 24 May to 28 June this year at the Pretoria Art Museum under the theme "Cultural Brokerage: Africa Imagined".
A lot has already been said by the Minister and other speakers about the Mzansi Golden Economy. We also appreciate the support from the IFP in this regard. We wish to reassert that arts, culture and the creative industries have been part and parcel of human economic activity and trade from time immemorial. Today it is an undisputed fact that many centuries ago our forebears traded in various fine arts from across the oceans. Nothing illustrates this better than the immaculate beads and the Golden Rhino found at Mapungubwe. How else would diamonds and gold dominate world trade for centuries if not for the role of the fine arts?
Other forms of art, such as painting, craft, photography, music, film, drama and dance, have been known to be identified with various countries. Unfortunately, at times the extent of the exposure enjoyed by various role- players from different parts of the world reflected the economic and political power of different nations of the world.
The Mzansi Golden Economy Strategy is seen, from our side, as an endeavor to reclaim the place of the cultural industry as a contributor to the national economy and even as an exporter of services to other parts of the world.
We are pleased to announce that we are making progress in initiatives such as the arts bank, which is aimed at identifying and purchasing art from artists, including emerging artists. Such artwork will then be leased to national departments and institutions both for decoration and showcasing purposes.
We are also making progress in establishing a sourcing enterprise, which will provide market access locally and internationally to artworks and performances by artists from all over the country.
We are also making progress in support of major events, as was mentioned earlier. Just to correct the hon Msweli, we do support cultural activities all over the country, not only the national arts festival. In the Eastern Cape we support a number of activities, including the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown. There is the Standard Bank Joy of Jazz in Gauteng, the Mapungubwe Arts Festival in Limpopo, the Buyel'Ekhaya Pan African Music Festival in the Eastern Cape, the Macufe Festival in the Free State, the Cape Town International Jazz Festival, Mpumalanga Comes Alive, and many more. These events are estimated to be creating a total of 25 000 job opportunities every year.
We are also making progress with a public art development programme, which includes murals, innovative public art installations, storytelling and street theatre. Notable among the achievements in this regard is the Cape Town-based Infecting the City.
In the visual arts area, this year we hosted the Visual Arts Indaba to discuss recommendations for growing the sector. These recommendations will be put into action this year. We have appointed the visual arts task team and put out the call for participation by the sector on issues such as the rights of artists and the resale rights of the arts. The department will continue this year to strive to partner with visual arts organisations to train more visual arts participants in the areas of arts administration and management.
In the area of design, we have identified the design industry as a strategic sector that can support economic advancement. The design industry has the potential to create meaningful jobs. In this financial year, we will focus our attention on policy formulation with a view to creating a design strategy.
Also in the pipeline is the creation of provincial fashion hubs. A pilot fashion hub will be established in KwaZulu-Natal by next year, and the plan is to create similar hubs in other parts of the country.
This year the department, in partnership with the Design Indaba, supported and gave an opportunity to 41 emerging creatives to participate at the International Design Indaba, where they were given a platform to showcase their work. We are hoping that in future these young entrepreneurs will be able to plough back what they learnt from the experience and will be able to come back as fully fledged businesspeople who will in turn create jobs for unskilled and semiskilled individuals.
In the area of library and information, we are pleased to announce that we continue to contribute towards improving literacy levels and knowledge development and the creation and sharing of knowledge through the building of libraries in communities. During the 2013 to 2015 Medium-Term Expenditure Framework, National Treasury allocated us an additional amount of R1,1 billion towards the building of community libraries. This is over and above our previous baseline amount in the conditional grants for community libraries. These funds are earmarked to address service delivery backlogs in the provision of community libraries and information services.
We are also pleased to announce that since the inception of the Community Library Conditional Grant in 2007, starting with an initial capital injection of R200 million, more than 900 persons have been employed in this service, 41 new libraries have been built and 244 existing libraries have been upgraded. In the 2013-14 financial year alone, we are planning to construct 16 new libraries and upgrade 40 existing community libraries. [Applause.]
Furthermore, this year we held a Library Week. The theme was "Educate yourself at your library". The impact of this work is intended to brand public libraries as places of knowledge and learning. Informed by the successes of this work, we have decided to launch the SA Library Week, which will be held annually.
On 28 February 2013, in collaboration with the US Embassy, the National Library organised Black History Month celebrations, featuring the "I have a dream" speech by Dr Martin Luther King Jr.
In June last year, the National Language Services signed a memorandum of understanding with the Tanzanian Library Service Board in the fields of books, modern technology, workshops, preservation and conservation. Also last year, the National Library of South Africa signed a memorandum of understanding with the National Library of Romania in the fields of photography, painting, print, digitisation and events. The National Library also signed an agreement with the National Library of Serbia in Belgrade in the fields of catalogues, collections, digitisation and publications.
We are pleased that there has been significant progress in the promotion of the culture of reading and writing. However, we remain aware that a lot more still needs to be done. We are working with the Department of Basic Education and the Department of Higher Education and Training in taking this to greater heights.
In the area of heritage, we support a number of projects, which the Minister has already mentioned. Just to add to this, there is the Historic Schools Project, including, among other places, Adams College, which celebrates 160 years of existence this year, and the University of Fort Hare, which started as the University College of Fort Hare and will be celebrating 100 years of existence in 2016. We have also tasked the National Heritage Council, together with the Amathole District Municipality, to work on the Nkonkobe Heritage University Town Project in Grahamstown.
To celebrate the legacy of Dr D D T Jabavu, the first public lecture on "Early African Intellectuals" will be held in September this year. This initiative is aimed at further strengthening the first book that the National Heritage Council published two years ago, titled Early Modern African Intellectuals.
The SA Heritage Resources Agency will be convening a National Indaba on Heritage as part of the social cohesion and nation-building programme. This will assist the nation to engage in robust discussion around what constitutes South African heritage, as part of social cohesion and nation- building. This will make us focus in terms of the need to conserve, preserve and value our heritage.
As part of the restoration of human dignity and preserving our history and heritage, we are renovating a number of graves of people who were buried and marked as "unknown" in the concentration camps. South Africa has launched the South African Heritage Resources Information System, an innovative, revolutionary and world-class web-based portal and system for the integrated management of our heritage resources.
In the area of national archives, despite the capacity challenges the available staff continues to do sterling work to deliver service to our country. We have played an active role in the international arena when we registered our documentary heritage in the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, Unesco, Memory of the World Register. These documents include, among others, the Bleek Collection, the Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, VOC, the Rivonia Trial and the DocSA collections.
We are also delighted to announce that we have submitted two nominations to the Unesco Memory of the World Register. These are the Convention for a Democratic South Africa, Codesa, Multiparty Negotiation Forum and the Medu [Roots] collections.
We have given the go-ahead to the National Archives and Records Service of South Africa to embark on a major capital works project to ensure that they increase their capacity to preserve our records.
In the course of this year, our Bureau of Heraldry will also have a special focus on the promotion of our national anthem. This project will be launched during Youth Month. The anthem will be promoted through a variety of activities. We hope the honourable House will support our Budget Vote. [Time expired.]